A little notice on the bulletin board was Morley's first inkling that his safe, secure routine was on the verge of mutating into something frighteningly unpredictable. "All personnel not on duty will report to the recreation room at 1900 hours, Solar time, to draw for side trip partners and destinations," it read. He buttonholed the crew messman. "What's all this about side trips, Oscar?" Roly poly Oscar looked at him incredulously. "The lay over trips. The time killer. On the level, don't you know?" Morley shook his head. "Well," Oscar told him, "We leave Earth shortly before Saturn is in opposition. They figure on the shortest possible run, which takes three months. If we discharge and start right back, the round trip would take about six months. That's fine, except that the synodic period for Earth and Saturn--Hey, you know what I'm talking about?" Morley admitted his ignorance, vaguely annoyed at the fact that for once he was the humble seeker for information, and someone else was being professorial. Oscar grinned. "And you studied astrogation! Well, when Saturn and Earth line up with the Sun, it takes three hundred and seventy eight days before they get in the same position again. So if we got back to Earth's orbit in six months, we'd still have about a hundred and eighty millions of miles to go, because Earth would be on Sol's other side at that time, in superior conjunction to Uranus." Morley digested this, while Oscar basked in the light of his own knowledge, enjoying himself hugely. "And the trips, Oscar?" "We lay over three or four months, 'til opposition time isn't too far away, and we pick partners and destinations by lot, and go out to Saturn's other moons on prospecting trips--ore deposits, jewels, botanical specimens, etc.--half for us, and half for the Company. It's a good deal, a regular vacation, and those two-men craft are sweet stuff. And if you're lucky--" He went on, but Morley heard no more. The prospect unnerved him. He was terrified at the idea of changing a safe subordinate position for that of an active partner, however temporary the arrangement might be. At the drawing, his hunch of impending misery proved all too real. He wound up facing the prospect of a stay on the frozen hell of Phoebe, scouring the miniature mountains for Japori crystals, with Madsen, MADSEN! for his only companion. * * * * * A week later the Solarian teetered down to a landing at Port Ulysses. With various expressions of profane and unbounded delight from her crew, she was turned over to the stevedores and the maintenance gang. Thereafter, at intervals, the thirty foot space boats took off for Mimas, Tethys, Dione, or whatever waystop the lottery had decreed. Madsen and Morley left on the fourth 'night,' with Phoebe hardly a week's run from them at ten miles a second.